Yes, settled to protect the children from the very dysfunctions we're imposing to "protect" them. But hey, if you have any quibbles with the data Neurobonkers presented, perhaps stating them may prove more productive than again embracing the snarky ad hominem. Me, I thought the charts spoke for themselves, particularly where the current meth boogieman was concerned.

Aside from meth rewiring the brain in not so wonderful ways, I think that the legal prohibitions against serves society quite well. How do you think it's death rate would compare to alcohol and tobacco if it was as legal and socially approved of as tobacco and alcohol?

Mexico seizes 229 tons of precursor chemicalsBy eec-kac | AP – 5 hrs agoMEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico said Friday that it seized 229 metric tons of precursor chemicals used to make methamphetamine, the third such huge seizure this month at the Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas, all of which were bound for a port in Guatemala.The seizure bringing to over 534 tons the amount of meth chemicals detected at Lazaro Cardenas in less than a month.Authorities announced on Dec. 19 that they had found almost 100 metric tons of methylamine at the port, and earlier said that 205 tons of the chemical had been found there over several days in early December.Experts familiar with meth production call it a huge amount of raw material, noting that under some production methods, precursor chemicals can yield about half their weight in uncut meth.The Attorney General's Office said the most recent seizure was found in 1,600 drums, and had been shipped from Shanghai, China.All three shipments originated in China and were destined for Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, authorities said.The office has not indicated which cartels may have been moving the chemicals, but U.S. officials have noted that the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's most powerful, has moved into meth production on an industrial scale.Sinaloa also has operations in Guatemala, and given recent busts by the Mexican army of huge meth processing facilities in Mexico, the gang may have decided to move some production to Guatemala.Lazaro Cardenas is located in the western Michoacan state, which is dominated by the Knights Templar cartel and previously by the La Familia gang.However, a series of arrests, deaths and infighting may have weakened those gangs' ability to engage in massive meth production.Also Friday, the attorney general's office in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz reported that it had found ten bodies in an area along the border with the neighboring state of Tamaulipas. The office said investigators were alerted to the bodies by a tip, and are working to identify them and the cause of death.The area has been the scene of bloody battles between the Gulf and Zetas cartels.

I think there is a valid distinction to be made between drugs which can overhwhelm free will (e.g. meht) and those that don't.

The meth trade via Mexico has been developing in Mexico for a number of years now. A few years back there was a Chinese guy in the legit pharm trade who purchased a Mexican citizenship. A house in his name was raided and in turns out that the house itself was a giant safety box containing $250 MILLION in CASH!!!

With hit teams hot in pursuit, the Chinese/"Mexican" pharm guy took off. Someone I know at DEA put the cuffs on him as he dined at a nice restaurant, somewhere in the US northeast IIRC.

Aside from meth rewiring the brain in not so wonderful ways, I think that the legal prohibitions against serves society quite well. How do you think it's death rate would compare to alcohol and tobacco if it was as legal and socially approved of as tobacco and alcohol?

And how hard to get rid of once it's in. Look at the lengths China had to go to in order to break it's opium problem. It would be harder for us now in the same situation.

WASHINGTON — American drug enforcement agents posing as money launderers secretly helped a powerful Mexican drug trafficker and his principal Colombian cocaine supplier move millions in drug proceeds around the world, as part of an effort to infiltrate and dismantle the criminal organizations wreaking havoc south of the border, according to newly obtained Mexican government documents. The documents, part of an extradition order by the Mexican Foreign Ministry against the Colombian supplier, describe American counternarcotics agents, Mexican law enforcement officials and a Colombian informant working undercover together over several months in 2007. Together, they conducted numerous wire transfers of tens of thousands of dollars at a time, smuggled millions of dollars in bulk cash — and escorted at least one large shipment of cocaine from Ecuador to Dallas to Madrid. The extradition order — obtained by the Mexican magazine emeequis and shared with The New York Times — includes testimony by a Drug Enforcement Administration special agent who oversaw a covert money laundering investigation against a Colombian trafficker named Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, also known as “The Rabbit.” He is accused of having sent some 150 tons of cocaine to Mexico between 2000 and 2010. Much of that cocaine, the authorities said, was destined for the United States. Last month, The Times reported that these kinds of operations had begun in Mexico as part of the drug agency’s expanding role in that country’s fight against organized crime. The newly obtained documents provide rare details of the extent of that cooperation and the ways that it blurs the lines between fighting and facilitating crime. Morris Panner, a former assistant United States attorney who is an adviser at the Center for International Criminal Justice at Harvard, said there were inherent risks in international law enforcement operations. “The same rules required domestically do not apply when agencies are operating overseas,” he said, “so the agencies can be forced to make up the rules as they go along.” Speaking about the Drug Enforcement Agency’s money laundering activities, he said: “It’s a slippery slope. If it’s not careful, the United States could end up helping the bad guys more than hurting them.” Shown copies of the documents, a Justice Department spokesman did not dispute their authenticity, but declined to make an official available to speak about them. But in a written statement, the D.E.A. strongly defended its activities, saying that they had allowed the authorities in Mexico to kill or capture dozens of high-ranking and midlevel traffickers. “Transnational organized groups can be defeated only by transnational law enforcement cooperation,” the agency wrote. “Such cooperation requires that law enforcement agencies — often from multiple countries — coordinate their activities, while at the same time always acting within their respective laws and authorities.” The documents make clear that it can take years for these investigations to yield results. They show that in 2007 the authorities infiltrated Mr. Poveda-Ortega’s operations. Mr. Poveda-Ortega was considered the principal cocaine supplier to the Mexican drug cartel leader Arturo Beltran Leyva. Two years later, Mexican security forces caught up with and killed Mr. Beltran Leyva in a gunfight about an hour outside of Mexico City. As for Mr. Poveda-Ortega, in 2008 he escaped a raid on his mansion outside Mexico City in which the authorities detained 15 of his associates and seized hundreds of thousands of dollars, along with two pet lions. But the authorities finally captured him in Mexico City in November 2010. According to the newly obtained documents, Mexico agreed to extradite Mr. Poveda-Ortega to the United States last May. But the American authorities refused to say whether the extradition had occurred. “That’s how long these investigations take,” said an American official in Mexico who would speak only on the condition that he not be identified discussing secret law enforcement operations. “They are an enormously complicated undertaking when it involves money laundering, wires, everything.” The documents, which read in some parts like a dry legal affidavit and in others like a script for a B-movie, underscore that complexity. They mix mind-numbing lists of dates and amounts of illegal wire transfers that were conducted during the course of the investigation. (Page 2 of 2) One scene described in the documents depicts the informant making deals to launder money during meetings with traffickers at a Mexico City shopping mall. Another describes undercover D.E.A. agents in Texas posing as pilots, offering to transport cocaine around the world for $1,000 per kilo. Those accounts come from the testimony by a D.E.A. special agent who described himself as a 12-year veteran and a resident of Texas. There is also testimony by a Colombian informant who posed as a money launderer and began collaborating with the D.E.A. after he was arrested on drug charges in 2003. The Times is withholding the agent’s and the informant’s names for security reasons. In January 2007, the informant reached out to associates of Mr. Poveda-Ortega and began talking his way into a series of money-laundering jobs — each one bigger than the last — that helped him win the confidence of low-level traffickers and ultimately gain access to the kingpins. A handful of undercover D.E.A. agents, according to the documents, posed as associates to the informant, including the two who offered their services as pilots and another who told the traffickers that he had several businesses that gave him access to bank accounts that the traffickers could use to deposit and disperse their drug money. In June 2007, the traffickers bit, asking the informant to give them an account number for their deposits. And over a four-day period in July, they transferred tens of thousands of dollars at a time from money exchange houses in Mexico into an account the D.E.A. had established at a Bank of America branch in Dallas. According to the testimony, the traffickers’ deposits totaled $1 million. And on the traffickers’ instructions, the informant withdrew the money and the D.E.A. arranged for it to be delivered to someone in Panama. Testimony by the informant suggests that the traffickers were pleased with the service. “At the beginning of August 2007, Harry asked my help receiving $3 million to $4 million in American money to be laundered,” the informant testified, referring to one of the Colombian traffickers involved in the investigation. “During subsequent recorded telephone calls I told Harry I couldn’t handle that much money.” Still, the informant and the D.E.A. tried to keep up. On one occasion, they enlisted a Mexican undercover law enforcement agent to pick up $499,250 from their trafficking targets in Mexico City. And a month later, that same agent picked up another load valued at more than $1 million. The more the money flowed, the stronger the relationship became between the informants and the traffickers. In one candid conversation, the traffickers boasted about who was able to move the biggest loads of money, the way fishermen brag about their catches. One said he could easily move $4 million to $5 million a month. Then the others spoke about the tricks of the trade, including how they had used various methods, including prepaid debit cards and an Herbalife account, to move the money. The next day, the informant was summoned to his first meeting in Mexico City with Mr. Poveda-Ortega and Mr. Beltran Leyva, who asked him to help them ship a 330-kilogram load to Spain from Ecuador. The documents say the shipment was transported over two weeks in October, with undercover Ecuadorean agents retrieving the cocaine from a tour bus in Quito and American agents testing its purity in Dallas before sending it on to Madrid. The testimony describes the informant reassuring the traffickers in code, using words like “girlfriend” or “chick” to refer to the cocaine, and saying that she had arrived just fine. But in reality, the testimony indicates, the Spanish authorities, tipped off in advance by the D.E.A., seized the load shortly after its arrival, rather than risk losing it.

LOS ANGELES — One year after federal law enforcement officials began cracking down on California’s medical marijuana industry with a series of high-profile arrests around the state, they finally moved into Los Angeles last month, giving 71 dispensaries until Tuesday to shut down. At the same time, because of a well-organized push by a new coalition of medical marijuana supporters, the City Council last week repealed a ban on the dispensaries that it had passed only a couple of months earlier.

In the Eagle Rock area of Los Angeles, 15 dispensaries are within a one-and-a-half-mile radius of the main commercial district.

A Venice Beach storefront advertising medical marijuana.

Despite years of trying fruitlessly to regulate medical marijuana, California again finds itself in a marijuana-laced chaos over a booming and divisive industry.

Nobody even knows how many medical marijuana dispensaries are in Los Angeles. Estimates range from 500 to more than 1,000. The only certainty, supporters and opponents agree, is that they far outnumber Starbucks.

“That’s the ongoing, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ circus of L.A.,” said Michael Larsen, president of the Neighborhood Council in Eagle Rock, a middle-class community that has 15 dispensaries within a one-and-a-half-mile radius of the main commercial area, many of them near houses. “People here are desperate, and there’s nothing they can do.”

Though the neighborhood’s dispensaries were among those ordered to close by Tuesday, many are still operating. As he looked at a young man who bounded out of the Together for Change dispensary on Thursday morning, Mr. Larsen said, “I’m going to go out on a limb, but that’s not a cancer patient.”

In the biggest push against medical marijuana since California legalized it in 1996, the federal authorities have shut at least 600 dispensaries statewide since last October. California’s four United States attorneys said the dispensaries violated not only federal law, which considers all possession and distribution of marijuana to be illegal, but state law, which requires operators to be nonprofit primary caregivers to their patients and to distribute marijuana strictly for medical purposes.

While announcing the actions against the 71 dispensaries, André Birotte Jr., the United States attorney for the Central District of California, indicated that it was only the beginning of his campaign in Los Angeles. Prosecutors filed asset forfeiture lawsuits against three dispensaries and sent letters warning of criminal charges to the operators and landlords of 68 others, a strategy that has closed nearly 97 percent of the targeted dispensaries elsewhere in the district, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the United States attorney.

Vague state laws governing medical marijuana have allowed recreational users of the drug to take advantage of the dispensaries, say supporters of the Los Angeles ban and the federal crackdown. Here on the boardwalk of Venice Beach, pitchmen dressed all in marijuana green approach passers-by with offers of a $35, 10-minute evaluation for a medical marijuana recommendation for everything from cancer to appetite loss.

Nearly 180 cities across the state have banned dispensaries, and lawsuits challenging the bans have reached the State Supreme Court. In more liberal areas, some 50 municipalities have passed medical marijuana ordinances, but most have suspended the regulation of dispensaries because of the federal offensive, according to Americans for Safe Access, a group that promotes access to medical marijuana. San Francisco and Oakland, the fiercest defenders of medical marijuana, have continued to issue permits to new dispensaries.

In 2004, shortly after the state effectively allowed the opening of storefront dispensaries, there were only three or four in Los Angeles, experts said. The number soon swelled into the hundreds before the city imposed a moratorium. But dispensaries continued to proliferate by exploiting a loophole in the moratorium even as lawsuits restricted the city’s ability to pass an ordinance. Over the summer, the City Council voted to ban dispensaries.

Anticipating the ban, the medical marijuana industry “that historically had not worked together very well” began organizing a counterattack, said Dan Rush, an official with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which formed a coalition with Americans for Safe Access and the Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance, a group of dispensary owners. The coalition raised $250,000, mostly from dispensaries, to gather the signatures necessary to place a referendum to overturn the ban on the ballot next March, said Don Duncan, California director for Americans for Safe Access.

Instead of allowing the referendum to proceed in March, when elections for mayor and City Council seats will also be held, the council on Tuesday voted to simply rescind the ban. José Huizar, one of only two council members to vote against the repeal, and the strongest backer of the ban, said the city was not in a position to fight an increasingly well-organized industry.

Mr. Huizar said California’s medical marijuana laws, considered the nation’s weakest, must be changed to better control the production and distribution of marijuana, as well as limit access to only real patients.

“Unless that happens, local cities are going to continue to play the cat-and-mouse game with the dispensaries,” he said, adding that the industry had fought attempts here to regulate it. “These are folks who are just out to protect their profits, and they do that by having as little regulation or oversight as possible by the City of Los Angeles.”

But coalition officials say they favor stricter regulations here.Rigo Valdez, director of organizing for the local union, which represents 500 dispensary workers in Los Angeles, said he would support an ordinance restricting the number of dispensaries to about 125 and keeping them away from schools and one another.

“We would be able to respect communities by staying away from sensitive-use areas while providing safe access for medical marijuana patients,” he said.

Such an ordinance would shut down many dispensaries catering to recreational users, said Yamileth Bolanos, president of the Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance and owner of a dispensary, the PureLife Alternative Wellness Center. “I felt we needed a medical situation with respect, not with all kinds of music going, tattoos and piercings in the face,” she said. “We’re normal people. Normal patients can come and acquire medicine.”

But the hundreds of dispensaries that would be put out of business will fight the federal crackdown, as some are already doing.

In downtown Los Angeles, where most of the dispensaries were included in the order to close, workers were renovating the storefront of the Downtown Collective. Inside, house music was being played in a lobby decorated to conjure “Scarface,” a poster of which hung on a wall.

“We don’t worry about this,” the manager said of the federal offensive, declining to give his name. “It’s between the lawyers.”

David Welch, a lawyer who is representing 15 of the 71 dispensaries and who is involved in a lawsuit challenging a ban at the State Supreme Court, said the federal clampdown would fail.

“Medical marijuana dispensaries are very much like what they distribute: they’re weeds,” he said. “You cut them down, you leave, and then they sprout back up.”

Those Mexican crime syndicates certainly find their way into the news a lot, don’t they? When they’re not running guns from American government sources, kidnapping children for prostitution or shipping tons of cocaine and marijuana through tunnels they’re busy corrupting the government. But it seems that now they’ve found yet another avenue of profit, and just like in many states in the USA it popped up after the government decided to jack up the tax rate on smokes.A Mexican industrial group said Tuesday an increase in tax on cigarettes that went into effect in 2011 has led to a proliferation of contraband, and that illegal cigarettes now account for nearly 17% of the cigarettes sold in the country.The Confederation of Industrial Chambers, or Concamin, said tobacco consumption hasn’t declined in the year-and-a-half since the higher tobacco tax took effect, although the sale of illegal cigarettes has reached record levels.Congress approved the higher tax on cigarettes in late 2010 despite protests from the country’s cigarette manufacturersThe new tax has a pack of smokes in Mexico going for an average of 35.5 pesos (currently $2.69 US) as compared to 20.5 pesos ($1.69) on the black market. And as more and more buyers flee to the cartels for their fix, the result is pretty much the same as we’ve seen in Illinois and New York – among other states. The anticipated tax boom fails to materialize in the government’s coffers and instead winds up financing criminal endeavors.But this may not be bad news for everybody. As we’ve discussed before, there are a couple of international agencies who are very interested in seeing cigarette taxes go up around the world, primarily so they can get a cut of the action. They are the United Nations and the World Health Organization. They’ve made some progress already in the Philippines and would like to expand well beyond that. But as this study from Freedom and Prosperity shows, this would probably be a great idea for the W.H.O but a big loser for everyone else.Since the bureaucrats running international organizations are not elected, such indirect control is the only way for national governments – on behalf of their taxpayers – to oversee the responsible use of funds.This is why it would be imprudent to give international bureaucracies an independent source of revenue. Not only would this augment the already considerable risk of imprudent budgetary practices, it would exacerbate the pro-statism bias in these organizations.Moreover, the first incidence of direct taxation to fund an international organization would unleash a tidal wave of similar direct-funding proposals. The camel’s nose would soon become an entire animal, then followed by a herd.It’s a disturbing trend. But the good news is that it can’t be put into place here in the United States without the complicit help of the Congress. And they’d never go for that… right?

SEATTLE – In two weeks, adults in this state will no longer be arrested or incarcerated for something that nearly 30 million Americans did last year. For the first time since prohibition began 75 years ago, recreational marijuana use will be legal; the misery-inducing crusade to lock up thousands of ordinary people has at last been seen, by a majority of voters in this state and in Colorado, for what it is: a monumental failure.

That is, unless the Obama administration steps in with an injunction, as it has threatened to in the past, against common sense. For what stands between ending this absurd front in the dead-ender war on drugs and the status quo is the federal government. It could intervene, citing the supremacy of federal law that still classifies marijuana as a dangerous drug.

But it shouldn’t. Social revolutions in a democracy, especially ones that begin with voters, should not be lightly dismissed. Forget all the lame jokes about Cheetos and Cheech and Chong. In the two-and-a-half weeks since a pair of progressive Western states sent a message that arresting 853,000 people a year for marijuana offenses is an insult to a country built on individual freedom, a whiff of positive, even monumental change is in the air.

In Mexico, where about 60,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence, political leaders are voicing cautious optimism that the tide could turn for the better. What happens when the United States, the largest consumer of drugs in the world, suddenly opts out of a black market that is the source of gangland death and corruption? That question, in small part, may now be answered.

Prosecutors in Washington and Colorado have announced they are dropping cases, effective immediately, against people for pot possession. I’ve heard from a couple of friends who are police officers, and guess what: they have a lot more to do than chase around recreational drug users.

Maine (ever-sensible Maine!) and Iowa, where the political soil is uniquely suited to good ideas, are looking to follow the Westerners. Within a few years, it seems likely that a dozen or more states will do so as well.

And for one more added measure of good karma, on Election Day, Representative Dan Lungren, nine-term Republican from California and a tired old drug warrior who backed some of the most draconian penalties against his fellow citizens, was ousted from office.

But there remains the big question of how President Obama will handle the cannabis spring. So far, he and Attorney General Eric Holder have been silent. I take that as a good sign, and certainly a departure from the hard-line position they took when California voters were considering legalization a few years ago. But if they need additional nudging, here are three reasons to let reason stand:

Hypocrisy. Popular culture and the sports-industrial complex would collapse without all the legal drugs that promise to extend erections, reduce inhibitions and keep people awake all night. I’m talking to you, Viagra, alcohol and high-potency energy drinks. Worse, perhaps, is the $25 billion nutritional supplement industry, offerings pills that make exaggerated health claims and steroid-based hormones that can have significant bad consequences. The corporate cartels behind these products get away with minimal regulation because of powerful backers like Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah.

In two years through 2011, more than 2,200 serious illnesses, including 33 fatalities, were reported by consumers of nutritional supplements. Federal officials have received reports of 13 deaths and 92 serious medical events from Five Hour Energy. And how many people died of marijuana ingestion? Of course, just because well-marketed, potentially hazardous potions are legal is no argument to bring pot onto retail shelves. But it’s hard to make a case for fairness when one person’s method of relaxation is cause for arrest while another’s lands him on a Monday night football ad.

Tax and regulate. Already, 18 states and the District of Columbia allow medical use of marijuana. This chaotic and unregulated system has resulted in price-gouging, phony prescriptions and outright scams. No wonder the pot dispensaries have opposed legalization — it could put them out of business.

Washington State officials estimate that taxation and regulation of licensed marijuana retail stores will generate $532 million in new revenue every year. Expand that number nationwide, and then also add into the mix all the wasted billions now spent investigating and prosecuting marijuana cases.

With pot out of the black market, states can have a serious discussion about use and abuse. The model is the campaign against drunk driving, which has made tremendous strides and saved countless lives at a time when alcohol is easier to get than ever before. Education, without one-sided moralizing, works.

Lead. That’s what transformative presidents do. From his years as a community organizer — and a young man whose own recreational drug use could have made him just another number in lockup — Obama knows well that racial minorities are disproportionately jailed for these crimes. With 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States has 25 percent of its prisoners — and about 500,000 of them are behind bars for drug offenses. On cost alone — up to $60,000 a year, to taxpayers, per prisoner — this is unsustainable.

Obama is uniquely suited to make the argument for change. On this issue, he’ll have support from the libertarian right and the humanitarian left. The question is not the backing — it’s whether the president will have the backbone.

Have We Lost the War on Drugs? After more than four decades of a failed experiment, the human cost has become too high. It is time to consider the decriminalization of drug use and the drug market..By GARY S. BECKER and KEVIN M. MURPHY

Stephen Webster

The American "war on drugs" began in 1971.

President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs" in 1971. The expectation then was that drug trafficking in the United States could be greatly reduced in a short time through federal policing—and yet the war on drugs continues to this day. The cost has been large in terms of lives, money and the well-being of many Americans, especially the poor and less educated. By most accounts, the gains from the war have been modest at best.

The direct monetary cost to American taxpayers of the war on drugs includes spending on police, the court personnel used to try drug users and traffickers, and the guards and other resources spent on imprisoning and punishing those convicted of drug offenses. Total current spending is estimated at over $40 billion a year.

These costs don't include many other harmful effects of the war on drugs that are difficult to quantify. For example, over the past 40 years the fraction of students who have dropped out of American high schools has remained large, at about 25%. Dropout rates are not high for middle-class white children, but they are very high for black and Hispanic children living in poor neighborhoods. Many factors explain the high dropout rates, especially bad schools and weak family support. But another important factor in inner-city neighborhoods is the temptation to drop out of school in order to profit from the drug trade.

The total number of persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the U.S. has grown from 330,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million today. Much of the increase in this population is directly due to the war on drugs and the severe punishment for persons convicted of drug trafficking. About 50% of the inmates in federal prisons and 20% of those in state prisons have been convicted of either selling or using drugs. The many minor drug traffickers and drug users who spend time in jail find fewer opportunities for legal employment after they get out of prison, and they develop better skills at criminal activities.

Prices of illegal drugs are pushed up whenever many drug traffickers are caught and punished harshly. The higher prices they get for drugs help compensate traffickers for the risks of being apprehended. Higher prices can discourage the demand for drugs, but they also enable some traffickers to make a lot of money if they avoid being caught, if they operate on a large enough scale, and if they can reduce competition from other traffickers. This explains why large-scale drug gangs and cartels are so profitable in the U.S., Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and other countries.

The paradox of the war on drugs is that the harder governments push the fight, the higher drug prices become to compensate for the greater risks. That leads to larger profits for traffickers who avoid being punished. This is why larger drug gangs often benefit from a tougher war on drugs, especially if the war mainly targets small-fry dealers and not the major drug gangs. Moreover, to the extent that a more aggressive war on drugs leads dealers to respond with higher levels of violence and corruption, an increase in enforcement can exacerbate the costs imposed on society.

The large profits for drug dealers who avoid being caught and punished encourage them to try to bribe and intimidate police, politicians, the military and anyone else involved in the war against drugs. If police and officials resist bribes and try to enforce antidrug laws, they are threatened with violence and often begin to fear for their lives and those of their families.

Mexico offers a well-documented example of some of the costs involved in drug wars. Probably more than 50,000 people have died since Mexico's antidrug campaign started in 2006. For perspective, about 150,000 deaths would result if the same fraction of Americans were killed. This number of deaths is many magnitudes greater than American losses in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, and is about three times the number of American deaths in the Vietnam War. Many of those killed were innocent civilians and the army personnel, police officers and local government officials involved in the antidrug effort.

There is also considerable bitterness in Mexico over the war because the great majority of the drugs go to the U.S. drug cartels in Mexico and several other Latin American countries would be far weaker if they were only selling drugs to domestic consumers (Brazilian and Mexican drug gangs also export a lot to Europe).

The main gain from the war on drugs claimed by advocates of continuing the war is a lower incidence of drug use and drug addiction. Basic economics does imply that, under given conditions, higher prices for a good leads to reduced demand for that good. The magnitude of the response depends on the availability of substitutes for the higher priced good. For example, many drug users might find alcohol a good substitute for drugs as drugs become more expensive.

The conclusion that higher prices reduce demand only "under given conditions" is especially important in considering the effects of higher drug prices due to the war on drugs. Making the selling and consumption of drugs illegal not only raises drug prices but also has other important effects. For example, while some consumers are reluctant to buy illegal goods, drugs may be an exception because drug use usually starts while people are teenagers or young adults. A rebellious streak may lead them to use and sell drugs precisely because those activities are illegal.

More important, some drugs, such as crack or heroin, are highly addictive. Many people addicted to smoking and to drinking alcohol manage to break their addictions when they get married or find good jobs, or as a result of other life-cycle events. They also often get help from groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, or by using patches and "fake" cigarettes that gradually wean them from their addiction to nicotine.

It is generally harder to break an addiction to illegal goods, like drugs. Drug addicts may be leery of going to clinics or to nonprofit "drugs anonymous" groups for help. They fear they will be reported for consuming illegal substances. Since the consumption of illegal drugs must be hidden to avoid arrest and conviction, many drug consumers must alter their lives in order to avoid detection.

Usually overlooked in discussions of the effects of the war on drugs is that the illegality of drugs stunts the development of ways to help drug addicts, such as the drug equivalent of nicotine patches. Thus, though the war on drugs may well have induced lower drug use through higher prices, it has likely also increased the rate of addiction. The illegality of drugs makes it harder for addicts to get help in breaking their addictions. It leads them to associate more with other addicts and less with people who might help them quit.

Most parents who support the war on drugs are mainly concerned about their children becoming addicted to drugs rather than simply becoming occasional or modest drug users. Yet the war on drugs may increase addiction rates, and it may even increase the total number of addicts.

.One moderate alternative to the war on drugs is to follow Portugal's lead and decriminalize all drug use while maintaining the illegality of drug trafficking. Decriminalizing drugs implies that persons cannot be criminally punished when they are found to be in possession of small quantities of drugs that could be used for their own consumption. Decriminalization would reduce the bloated U.S. prison population since drug users could no longer be sent to jail. Decriminalization would make it easier for drug addicts to openly seek help from clinics and self-help groups, and it would make companies more likely to develop products and methods that address addiction.

Some evidence is available on the effects of Portugal's decriminalization of drugs, which began in 2001. A study published in 2010 in the British Journal of Criminology found that in Portugal since decriminalization, imprisonment on drug-related charges has gone down; drug use among young persons appears to have increased only modestly, if at all; visits to clinics that help with drug addictions and diseases from drug use have increased; and opiate-related deaths have fallen.

Decriminalization of all drugs by the U.S. would be a major positive step away from the war on drugs. In recent years, states have begun to decriminalize marijuana, one of the least addictive and less damaging drugs. Marijuana is now decriminalized in some form in about 20 states, and it is de facto decriminalized in some others as well. If decriminalization of marijuana proves successful, the next step would be to decriminalize other drugs, perhaps starting with amphetamines. Gradually, this might lead to the full decriminalization of all drugs.

Though the decriminalization of drug use would have many benefits, it would not, by itself, reduce many of the costs of the war on drugs, since those involve actions against traffickers. These costs would not be greatly reduced unless selling drugs was also decriminalized. Full decriminalization on both sides of the drug market would lower drug prices, reduce the role of criminals in producing and selling drugs, improve many inner-city neighborhoods, encourage more minority students in the U.S. to finish high school, substantially lessen the drug problems of Mexico and other countries involved in supplying drugs, greatly reduce the number of state and federal prisoners and the harmful effects on drug offenders of spending years in prison, and save the financial resources of government.

The lower drug prices that would result from full decriminalization may well encourage greater consumption of drugs, but it would also lead to lower addiction rates and perhaps even to fewer drug addicts, since heavy drug users would find it easier to quit. Excise taxes on the sale of drugs, similar to those on cigarettes and alcohol, could be used to moderate some, if not most, of any increased drug use caused by the lower prices.

Taxing legal production would eliminate the advantage that violent criminals have in the current marketplace. Just as gangsters were largely driven out of the alcohol market after the end of prohibition, violent drug gangs would be driven out of a decriminalized drug market. Since the major costs of the drug war are the costs of the crime associated with drug trafficking, the costs to society would be greatly reduced even if overall drug consumption increased somewhat.

The decriminalization of both drug use and the drug market won't be attained easily, as there is powerful opposition to each of them. The disastrous effects of the American war on drugs are becoming more apparent, however, not only in the U.S. but beyond its borders. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon has suggested "market solutions" as one alternative to the problem. Perhaps the combined efforts of leaders in different countries can succeed in making a big enough push toward finally ending this long, enormously destructive policy experiment.

—Mr. Becker is a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago. He won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1992. Mr. Murphy is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Both are senior fellows of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

CONGRESS - Flanked by more than 150 advocates from around the country, U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) on Monday put forward his legislation allowing states to legalize medical marijuana in an effort to end the confusion surrounding federal pot policy.Blumeanuer’s legislation, which has 13 co-sponsors — including GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California — would create a framework for the FDA to eventually legalize medicinal marijuana. It would also block the feds from interfering in any of the 19 states where medical marijuana is legal.At a press conference outside the Capitol, Blumenauer didn’t attack the Drug Enforcement Agency for targeting marijuana dispensaries or blame the Justice Department for forcing marijuana businesses to operate in a legal gray zone. Instead, he pitched his legislation as a solution to the confusion surrounding federal marijuana policy.

CONGRESS - Flanked by more than 150 advocates from around the country, U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) on Monday put forward his legislation allowing states to legalize medical marijuana in an effort to end the confusion surrounding federal pot policy.Blumeanuer’s legislation, which has 13 co-sponsors — including GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California — would create a framework for the FDA to eventually legalize medicinal marijuana. It would also block the feds from interfering in any of the 19 states where medical marijuana is legal.At a press conference outside the Capitol, Blumenauer didn’t attack the Drug Enforcement Agency for targeting marijuana dispensaries or blame the Justice Department for forcing marijuana businesses to operate in a legal gray zone. Instead, he pitched his legislation as a solution to the confusion surrounding federal marijuana policy.

Or, we could actually just follow the constitution and leave intrastate issues up to the state or states in question, per the 10th AMD.

I eagerly await GM's witticisms on this one ==========================

Marijuana Crops in California Threaten Forests and WildlifeJim Wilson/The New York Times

Marijuana crops on private land in Humboldt County, Calif. Some medical marijuana growers follow state rules, but others do not.By FELICITY BARRINGERPublished: June 20, 2013 148 Comments

ARCATA, Calif. — It took the death of a small, rare member of the weasel family to focus the attention of Northern California’s marijuana growers on the impact that their huge and expanding activities were having on the environment.National Twitter Logo.Connect With Us on Twitter

While some marijuana farms divert and dry up streams, this grower uses conservation methods like a rainwater holding pond.

The animal, a Pacific fisher, had been poisoned by an anticoagulant in rat poisons like d-Con. Since then, six other poisoned fishers have been found. Two endangered spotted owls tested positive. Mourad W. Gabriel, a scientist at the University of California, Davis, concluded that the contamination began when marijuana growers in deep forests spread d-Con to protect their plants from wood rats.

That news has helped growers acknowledge, reluctantly, what their antagonists in law enforcement have long maintained: like industrial logging before it, the booming business of marijuana is a threat to forests whose looming dark redwoods preside over vibrant ecosystems.

Hilltops have been leveled to make room for the crop. Bulldozers start landslides on erosion-prone mountainsides. Road and dam construction clogs some streams with dislodged soil. Others are bled dry by diversions. Little water is left for salmon whose populations have been decimated by logging.

And local and state jurisdictions’ ability to deal with the problem has been hobbled by, among other things, the drug’s murky legal status. It is approved by the state for medical uses but still illegal under federal law, leading to a patchwork of growers. Some operate within state rules, while others operate totally outside the law.

The environmental damage may not be as extensive as that caused by the 19th-century diking of the Humboldt estuary here, or 20th-century clear-cut logging, but the romantic outlaw drug has become a destructive juggernaut, experts agree.

“In my career I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Stormer Feiler, a scientist with California’s North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. “Since 2007 the amount of unregulated activities has exploded.” He added, “They are grading the mountaintops now, so it affects the whole watershed below.”

Scott Bauer, of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, said, “I went out on a site yesterday where there was an active water diversion providing water to 15 different groups of people or individuals,” many of them growers. “The stream is going to dry up this year.”

While it is hard to find data on such an industry, Anthony Silvaggio, a sociology lecturer at Humboldt State University, pointed to anecdotal evidence in a Google Earth virtual “flyover” he made of the industrial farm plots and the damage they cause. The video was later enhanced and distributed by Mother Jones magazine.

Brad Job’s territory as a federal Bureau of Land Management officer includes public lands favored, he said, by Mexican drug cartels whose environmental practices are the most destructive. “The watershed was already lying on the ground bleeding,” Mr. Job said. “The people who divert water in the summer are kicking it in the stomach.”

That water is crucial to restoring local runs of imperiled Coho salmon, Chinook salmon and steelhead, which swam up Eel River tributaries by the tens of thousands before the logging era. Scott Greacen, executive director of Friends of the Eel River, said, “It’s not weed that drove the Coho to the brink of extinction, but it may kick it over the edge.” By various estimates, each plant needs at least one gallon and as much as six gallons of water during a season.

The idea that the counterculture’s crop of choice is bad for the environment has gone down hard here. Marijuana is an economic staple, particularly in Humboldt County’s rural southern end, called SoHum. Jennifer Budwig, the vice president of a local bank, estimated last year that marijuana infused more than $415 million into the county’s annual economic activity, one-quarter of the total.

For the professed hippies who moved here decades ago, marijuana farming combines defiance of society’s strictures, shared communal values and a steady income. “Marijuana has had a framework that started in the 1930s with jazz musicians,” said Gregg Gold, a psychology professor at Humboldt State University. “It’s a cultural icon of resistance to authority.”

“In 2013,” he added, “you’re asking that we reframe it in people’s minds as just another agribusiness. That’s a huge shift.”

It is a thriving agribusiness. Derek Roy, a special agent enforcing endangered species protections for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said, “These grow sites continue to get larger and larger.” Things took off after 1996, when California decriminalized the use of medical marijuana, Mr. Roy said. ===============(Page 2 of 2)

The older farmers say that as the fierce antidrug campaigns waned and the medical marijuana market developed, newcomers arrived eager to cash in, particularly in the past decade, according to two growers who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“There is a gold rush,” Mr. Greacen said. “And it’s a race to the bottom in terms of environmental impacts.”

Now that Colorado and Washington voters have approved the recreational use of the drug, there is a widespread belief that the days of high prices for marijuana are nearly over.

As Mikal Jakubal, a resident of SoHum who is directing a documentary film about Humboldt County’s marijuana business, puts it, “Everyone thinks, ‘This might be the last good year.’ ” That helps fuel the willy-nilly expansion of cultivation, the tearing up of hillsides and the diversions that dry out creeks.

The worst damage is on public lands. There, extensive plantings are surrounded by d-Con-laced tuna and sardine cans placed around perimeters by the dozens, Dr. Gabriel said. Mr. Job of the land management bureau said these illegal operations have 70,000 to 100,000 plants; they are believed to be the work of Mexican drug cartels.

But small farmers have an impact, too. Mr. Bauer of the State Fish and Wildlife Department said that when he found the water diversion last week and asked those responsible about it, “these people we met with were pointing a finger all over the watershed, saying: ‘We’re not that big. There are bigger people out there.’ ”

Federal environmental agents, including Mr. Roy and Mr. Job, have brought two cases to the United States attorney’s office in San Francisco. The office declined to prosecute a case last year, they said. A new one is under review. But, they said, manpower for enforcement is limited.

Given federal prohibitions against profiting from marijuana, county officials have a limited toolbox. “We have land-use authority, that’s it,” said Mark Lovelace, a Humboldt County supervisor. He chafes at the county’s inability to establish a system of permits, for fear of running afoul of federal law. His board did just pass a resolution asking local businesses not to sell d-Con. (A representative of Reckitt Benckiser, which makes the poison, wrote a letter of protest.)

Mr. Lovelace and others contend that legalizing marijuana would open the door to regulation and put the brakes on environmental abuses.

In the meantime, the industry has begun to police itself. Some growers have benefited from a program run by a local nonprofit organization, Sanctuary Forest, that subsidizes the installation of tanks that can store water in the winter, when it is plentiful, for use in dry months.

“There may be people who grow pot in our group,” said Tasha McKee, executive director of Sanctuary Forest. “I’m sure there are. We don’t ask that question.”

A local group, the Emerald Growers Association, recently produced a handbook on sustainable practices.

“There is an identity crisis going on right now,” said Gary Graham Hughes, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center in Arcata. “The people who are really involved with this industry are trying to understand what their responsibilities are.”

The smartest guy I knew in law school would fire up a doobie before settling in to read securities regulations. He was on law review and went on to be the senior VP of legal affairs at one of the biggest studios in all of Hollywood.

There are tens and tens of millions of people who smoke pot to less effect that people who drink.

"The smartest guy I knew in law school would fire up a doobie before settling in to read securities regulations."

In college, there was reportedly more use by the top 10% than by the bottom. That said, a small loss of IQ for someone starting at 150-160 might make interactions with the other 99.9% more interesting, while the same loss at the low end might render one dysfunctional.

"There are tens and tens of millions of people who smoke pot to less effect that people who drink."

Agree, but less damage than the drug with the most damage brings to mind Huma claiming what she did was legal and ethical because Hillary approved it. A low bar.

Curious to hear about your choice to not drink alcohol. Maybe at my beer summit with BD.

"IMHO the two should face similar legal treatment."

Yes. Similar and different. Colorado is struggling with what to do with THC levels for driving law standards. The effect is not harmless but quite different than alcohol. Maybe we should measure remaining IQ instead of the amount lost to the drug.

"Permanent IQ reduction and memory loss."

I am reminded of the pot crazed burglars who broke in and stole from the doughnut shop but in the end they forgot to empty the register.

Researchers found persistent users of the drug, who started smoking it at school, had lower IQ scores as adults.

They were also significantly more likely to have attention and memory problems in later life, than their peers who abstained.

Furthermore, those who started as teenagers and used it heavily, but quit as adults, did not regain their full mental powers, found academics at King’s College London and Duke University in the US.

They looked at data from over 1,000 people from Dunedin in New Zealand, who have been followed through their lives since being born in 1972 or 1973.

Participants were asked about cannabis usage when they were 18, 21, 26, 32 and 38. Their IQ was tested at 13 and 38. In addition, each nominated a close friend or family member, who was asked about attention and memory problems.

About one in 20 admitted to starting cannabis use before the age of 18, while a further one in 10 took up the habit in the early or mid 20s.

Professor Terrie Moffitt, of KCL’s Institute of Psychiatry, who contributed to the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said “persistent users” who started as teenagers suffered a drop of eight IQ points at the age of 38, compared to when they were 13.

Persistent users meant those who used it during at least three of the ages from 18 to 38, and who said at each occasion they were smoking it on at least four days a week.

“For example, individuals who started using cannabis in adolescence and used it for years thereafter showed an average eight-point IQ decline.

“Quitting or reducing cannabis use did not appear to fully restore intellectual functioning among adolescent-onset former persistent cannabis users,” she said.

Although eight points did not sound much, it was not trivial, she warned.

It meant that an average person dropped far down the intelligence rankings, so that instead of 50 per cent of the population being more intelligent than them, 71 per cent were.

“Research has shown that IQ is a strong determinant of a person’s access to a college education, their lifelong total income, their access to a good job, their performance on the job, their tendency to develop heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and even early death,” she said.

“Individuals who lose eight IQ points in their teens and 20s may be disadvantaged, relative to their same-age peers, in most of the important aspects of life and for years to come.”

The cognitive abilities of the 10 per cent of people who started in their 20s - who could loosely be classed as college smokers - also suffered while they were still smoking.

However, if they gave up at least a year before their IQ test at 38, their intelligence recovered, suggesting their brains were more resilient and bounced back.

Prof Moffitt said adolescent brains appeared "more vulnerable to damage and disruption" from cannabis than those of fully mature adults.

Reliable figures on cannabis usage among today’s British teens and twentysomethings are hard to come by.

But Prof Moffitt said there was growing concern in the US that cannabis was increasingly being seen as a safe alternative to tobacco.

“This is the first year that more secondary school students in the US are using cannabis than tobacco, according to the Monitoring the Future project at the University of Michigan,” she noted.

“Fewer now think cannabis is damaging than tobacco. But cannabis is harmful for the very young.”

You might have missed it, but on July 9 the White House quietly announced in a press release that cocaine use in the U.S. is down by over a third since 2006. This news comes on the heels of a major reduction in world-wide cocaine production, down 41% between 2001 and 2012 according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Cocaine-related deaths in the U.S. dropped 44% between 2006 and 2010. The rate of positive drug tests for cocaine declined even more steeply, down 65% between 2006 and mid-2012.

You do not have to have lived during the cocaine and crack epidemics of the 1980s and early 1990s to be grateful for this remarkable change. If you did, the progress seems miraculous. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is cutting the funds and undermining the political will that helped bring about this transformation.

Of all those who contributed to this striking success in the effort to control illegal drugs, two leaders deserve particular thanks: Alvaro Uribe, president of Colombia from 2002-10, and Felipe Calderón, president of Mexico from 2006-12.

A Coast Guard crew member from the cutter Bernard C. Webber, left, hands a bale of cocaine to a DEA police officer, Friday, April 26, 2013 at the U.S. Coast Guard base in Miami Beach, Fla.

President Uribe changed the future of Colombia by attacking the cocaine trade and violent groups on the left and right who used trafficking as a source of power. He brought the rule of law to large areas of his country where people had given up hope.

President Calderón made taking back Mexico from violent traffickers—narco-terrorists—the center of his administration. While cocaine trafficking is only a part of the cartels' criminal activity, Mr. Calderón stepped up attacks on cartel leaders; in January 2007 he even sent a planeload of his worst traffickers to justice in the United States. Because he had the courage to take on this difficult struggle, he began to see the power and violence of these criminal groups decline before he left office, as drug-related murders dropped 12% in the first five months of 2012.

Messrs. Uribe and Calderón created an unprecedented alliance with the U.S. to serve the interests of their homelands, but as in any true alliance all the partners were better for it. Democrats and Republicans stood up for these two leaders, giving critical enforcement, eradication, interdiction and adjudication support to their efforts. During their presidencies, Colombia and Mexico extradited hundreds of their worst traffickers to the U.S. to buy time for their developing judicial systems.

Recent events in Mexico indicate that enforcement successes there will be sustained. But Mr. Calderón has expressed frustration with the failure to reduce drug consumption in the U.S., and he has warned that unchecked demand could lead to drug legalization.

A 41% reduction in cocaine production, one might imagine, has something to do with a 44% reduction in cocaine overdoses. Yet the Obama administration is actually proposing to cut funding for international drug control to $1.5 billion for fiscal year 2014 from $1.9 billion in this fiscal year, a 21% reduction. In its July 9 press release, the White House tells us that it is time to spend an additional $1.4 billion to expand treatment and education, "the largest percentage increase in at least two decades."

Prevention and treatment are worthy activities, but the administration seems to have missed the point in its press release, which links the declines in cocaine use to reductions in supply. It offers no evidence that treatment and prevention played any role.

Most of all, President Obama's failure to push back against drug legalization in this country works against international anti-drug efforts. Raymond Yans, president of the International Narcotics Control Board, warned in March that allowing the implementation of legalization initiatives in Colorado and Washington "would be a violation of international law, namely the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, to which the United States is a party." The U.S. is now undermining the foundation of the very achievement the administration just announced.

President Obama is as close to an icon for the young as any president has ever been. He and many of his generation used drugs and suffered for that use—a point he makes in his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams From My Father."

The president needs once again to speak honestly about the danger. If he sat with our children and spoke to them as if they were his daughters, he would be a powerful force for prevention. How about a single speech? Perhaps he could dedicate it to America's allies and the brave men and women who have given their lives to keep us safe.

Mr. Walters, the chief operating officer of the Hudson Institute, was director of drug control policy for President George W. Bush.

"Most of all, President Obama's failure to push back against drug legalization in this country works against international anti-drug efforts. Raymond Yans, president of the International Narcotics Control Board, warned in March that allowing the implementation of legalization initiatives in Colorado and Washington "would be a violation of international law, namely the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, to which the United States is a party." The U.S. is now undermining the foundation of the very achievement the administration just announced."

Colorado has become a major exporter of illegally grown marijuana to the rest of the country, according to a new report by a network of law enforcement organizations.

Last year, police across the country made at least 274 highway seizures of marijuana that investigators linked back to Colorado. According to the report, the seized pot — 3½ tons of it in 2012 — was destined for 37 different states, most frequently Kansas, Missouri and Illinois.

Many of the cases involved multi-pound quantities of marijuana being shipped out of state. Officers also seized hundreds of thousands of dollars connected to the cases, the report states. Some of the seized marijuana was diverted from medical-marijuana dispensaries, the report alleges.

In addition, U.S. Postal Service inspectors last year seized 158 packages of marijuana being sent through the mail, according to the report. They seized 209 packages of pot in the first five months of this year alone.

All of the reported seizure numbers are significantly higher than they were several years ago. In 2005, for instance, police made 54 highway seizures of Colorado-grown marijuana, according to the report.

The report was written by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a network of law enforcement organizations in four western states that share information on drug-running patterns.

"If you look at those trends, you have to say there's something going on here," said Tom Gorman, the director of the group, which goes by the acronym RMHIDTA. "And it certainly appears that Colorado has become a source state for destinations east of here."

Heroin Makes a ComebackThis Time, Small Towns are Increasingly Beset by Addiction, Drug-Related CrimesBy ZUSHA ELINSON and ARIAN CAMPO-FLORES

With prescription drugs tougher to get, addicts are increasingly turning to heroin. Here, a 22-year-old heroin user shoots up in a Seattle park.

ELLENSBURG, Wash.—This small city east of the Cascade Mountains is known for its hay farms, rodeos and, increasingly, something more sinister: a growing heroin problem.

The drug surfaced in the past two years and is spawning a new generation of addicts. The fatal overdose of a state trooper's son in May convulsed the town—especially when the two men arrested and charged with selling him heroin turned out to be a county official's sons. They pleaded not guilty in Kittitas County Superior Court and are awaiting trial.

"It really shook our community," said Norman Redberg, executive director of Kittitas County Alcohol Drug Dependency Service. He has evaluated 27 heroin users in the fiscal year that ended June 30, compared with three in 2008. Ellensburg has 18,000 residents.

Heroin use in the U.S. is soaring, especially in rural areas, amid ample supply and a shift away from costlier prescription narcotics that are becoming tougher to acquire. The number of people who say they have used heroin in the past year jumped 53.5% to 620,000 between 2002 to 2011, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. There were 3,094 overdose deaths in 2010, a 55% increase from 2000, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Much of the heroin that reaches smaller towns such as Ellensburg comes from Mexico, where producers have ramped up production in recent years, drug officials say. Heroin seizures at the Southwest border, from Texas to California, ballooned to 1,989 kilograms in fiscal 2012 from 487 kilograms in 2008, according to figures from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The heroin scourge has been driven largely by a law-enforcement crackdown on illicit use of prescription painkillers such as oxycodone and drug-company reformulations that make the pills harder to crush and snort, drug officials say. That has pushed those who were addicted to the pills to turn to heroin, which is cheaper and more plentiful.

"Basically, you have a generation of ready-made heroin addicts," said Matthew Barnes, special agent in charge of the DEA's Seattle division.

Given the growing supply, dealers have flooded local markets with heroin. Former users interviewed in Ellensburg, who didn't want to be identified, said dealers promoted the drug aggressively. A 21-year-old recovering addict said she made the switch from pain pills to heroin after her dealer one day held out both options in his hands and encouraged her to choose the cheaper one.

A former Marine who lives in Ellensburg said he switched to heroin after getting hooked on oxycodone prescribed to him for an injury suffered while serving overseas. "To me, it was identical," said the 28-year-old. "It's mind-numbing, an instant antidepressant." He was eventually arrested for writing bad checks; if he successfully completes drug treatment, charges will be dropped.

Drug experts say the heroin sold today is generally purer and thereby more potent than the varieties prevalent in past decades, increasing the risk of overdose. Moreover, the purity can vary enormously from one batch to the next. A baggie "may be 15% pure one day, and the next day it's 60%," said Skip Holbrook, the police chief in Huntington, W.Va., which sits in an area of Appalachia where heroin is spreading. "It's like playing Russian roulette."

A 22-year-old intravenous drug user prepares a needle before injecting heroin in a park in Seattle.

More photos and interactive graphics

In contrast to the 1970s and 1980s, when heroin ravaged inner-city neighborhoods, this time it is taking hold in rural places that are often unprepared to deal with the fallout, a trend noted in this year's White House National Drug Control Strategy report. Many lack addiction-treatment options. According to data analyzed by the Maine Rural Health Research Center, 93% of facilities nationwide with treatment programs for opioids, a class of pain-relief drugs including heroin, are located in metropolitan areas.

Small-town police forces strain to handle the additional narcotics investigations and drug-related crimes such as burglaries. Some afflicted areas are far from hospital emergency rooms, raising the risk that an overdose will be deadly. In Ellensburg, Kim Hitchcock, who works at a nonprofit public-health organization, has started a needle-exchange program in her spare time and taken young addicts released from the hospital following overdoses into her home. "There's a tremendous lack of services in our area," she said.

In Marinette, Wis., some employers are having difficulty filling positions because so many applicants are testing positive for heroin, said state Rep. John Nygren. The problem prompted the local chamber of commerce in April to begin assembling a consortium of community organizations to address the problem. Meanwhile, a sharp rise in heroin-related crime has fed a 31% increase in the inmate population at the 164-bed local jail over the past two years, said administrator Bob Majewski.

The town of 11,000 has no residential treatment centers for addicts. "If somebody says, 'I'm at bottom, I need help,' there's nothing that we have to give them," said Sgt. Scott Ries of the Marinette Police Department. "It's really sad."

The only option is to head to cities such as Green Bay, an hour away.

In some rural areas of Kentucky, communities "are experiencing heroin literally for the first time," said Bill Mark, director of the Northern Kentucky Drug Strike Force. Last year, 28 of the state's 120 counties logged their first heroin arrests since he started tracking such data in 2008, he said.

Back in Huntington, W.Va., heroin became the top drug problem in the city of around 50,000 about six months ago, said Mr. Holbrook, the police chief. Last month, a local task force nabbed 3.7 pounds of the drug, one of the largest seizures ever in the region. And police are contending with a steady increase in property crimes like larceny, driven by addicts trying to feed their habit.

The drug "transcends all areas of our town," Mr. Holbrook said. "It is absolutely the most pressing issue that we face."

The legal use of marijuana for both medical use and adult recreational use is on the rise. Here are five facts that might just surprise you about the drug.

Source: Chuck Coker, Flickr.

1. Marijuana could be the best-selling legal drug. Ever.According to ArcView Market Research, the national market for legalized marijuana could hit $10.2 billion in five years. Pfizer's (NYSE: PFE ) Lipitor currently holds the record for prescription drugs at about $13 billion. If ArcView's prediction is correct, it's not hard to see how marijuana could surpass that record in the following year. It's growing from a base of just $1.44 billion this year.

And unlike Pfizer, which saw Lipitor sales crash once generic versions hit the market, there isn't likely to be a cliff that causes sales to drop precipitously, short of having the federal government decide to crack down on state laws. Of course, unlike Lipitor, you can't invest in one company to capture all the revenue.

2. 14 states could join Colorado and Washington legalizing marijuana for recreational useIn fact, that's one of the driving forces behind ArcView's growth prediction. The sentiment has shifted recently; a majority of Americans now favor legalization. If they vote the same way they answer poll questions, it's likely that we'll see many more states where marijuana use is legal in the coming five years.

The driving force for the states is the potential revenue from taxes. They want to get their cut, which they don't get on illegal sales now.

It'll be interesting to watch Colorado and Washington as they try to deal with how to tax what many consider to be a drug to help people -- which are typically not taxed -- compared with a recreational drug, which, like cigarettes and alcohol, are typically highly taxed.

3. The government sends out marijuana cigarettes each month It's part of a study to see if marijuana could help patients with glaucoma. At its peak, there were 30 patients enrolled in the study, which stopped accepting new participants in 1992. Those still enrolled get sent their prescriptions from a special farm on the University of Mississippi campus that provides the drug for medical research.

4. Only 6% of studies on marijuana investigate its potential benefit.According to CNN's Sanjay Gupta, the other 94% investigate its potential harm. The problem, as Gupta points out, is that it's very hard to run clinical trials on marijuana use since it's still illegal at the national level. While the University of Mississippi farm can provide the medication legally for studies, it's apparently not that all that easy to acquire medication from it.

Researchers also have to gain approval from the NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse, which has a mission "to lead the nation in bringing the power of science to bear on drug abuse and addiction." That's not exactly a ringing endorsement for potential benefits of drugs.

5. The receptor that marijuana activates has been an (unsuccessful) drug targetTetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, one of the active drugs in marijuana, is available as a prescription drug called Marinol, developed by Abbott's drug arm, now called AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV ) , to stimulate appetite and control nausea and vomiting in patients taking chemotherapy. But the drug isn't widely used because it's absorbed by different people at different levels, making it hard to get the right dosage .

Sanofi (NYSE: SNY ) tried to do the opposite and block the receptor, thus controlling appetite. While Sanofi's obesity drug, Acomplia, was fairly good at helping patients shed the pounds, it had psychiatric side effects including depression. The FDA never approved the drug, and Sanofi had to remove it from the market in Europe in 2008.

*************************************My thoughts: On #1 Best selling drug? Who would grow it and sell it?

On #2 Kind of sad that the driving force for legalization is tax revenue. Just another example how everything is money. I guess one could make similar claims for gambling and prostitution where those are also legal. Alcohol and maybe a sugar tax. The latter suddenly could be labeled a vice.

On #3 I didn't know the government was sponsoring studies on use of marijuana for glaucoma. It can lower intra-orbital pressures but my understanding is the affects were too erratic and there are so many better drugs that the use for this is dubious. I met an eye doctor in Florida who got into trouble with the ATF for testing this. He claimed they ruined his life and his wife eventually committed suicide over it. I only know his side of the story. This was about ten years ago. He was in his seventies.

On # 4 Old drugs do make comebacks. Gupta noted that most studies looked at the harms not the benefits. Remember thalidomide? The drug given to pregnant women in Europe that led to horrible birth defects? Just the mere mention of it afterwards gave everyone the shivers. Now it is a beneficial drug used for other diseases.

On # 5 The Sanofi drug did work to help people lose weight but then a suicide was reported and that was that in the US. I don't know what the experience was in Europe since it was approved there and later taken off their market.

I left the comments from some other readers here:

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 5:25 AM, VikingBear wrote:

Legalize everything.

Let the herd cull itself.

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 8:46 PM, Kalamakuaikalani wrote:

Hard to take your article seriously when you title it "5 Jaw-Dropping Facts ....." & then subtitle number 1: 1. Marijuana could be the best-selling legal drug. Ever. ................... It's not a FACT if marijuana COULD BE. It either is or it isn't & THEN, that would be a FACT.

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 8:53 PM, glenns45 wrote:

Controlled Substance Act of 1971 signed by a President who was forced to resign or be prosecuted. The DEA was created to make sure the right people were selling the Drugs and supporting the NWO. The Feds are the ones who bring in the drugs this is on public record do some research.

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 9:23 PM, towolf2 wrote:

When it smacks somebody upside the chops, then you know what is a fact and what isn't. That's 35 years as a pro grower speaking. Say hey to The Duke for me!!

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 9:26 PM, towolf2 wrote:

Which part am I reading? The educated humorous enriching part, or is this the NASCAR Channel. Caught out again.

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 9:53 PM, oldmutt1949 wrote:

3. French Academy of Science using the atomic microscope has shown long term use of marijuana can alter a person DNA ( Science Daily )

4. Total number of people killed in the drug war in Mexico, central and Latin America exceeds the number of U.S. casualties in VIet Nam.

5. A lot of hippies from my generation who smoked this polluted crap are no longer here.

And last but not least their isn't a single study that has confirmed that all the substances in marijuana are safe evident by he emergency rooms a In Denver and other cities kept busy treating kids poisoned by this stuff because their parents are so dumb down they can't provide their children a safe environment.

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 9:59 PM, fixer wrote:

Hemp used to be such a valuable crop that in George Washington's time ,farms we're required to plant a percentage of their fields with hemp.The oil from the seeds was a good lamp oil and the fiber made strong cloth and rope.

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 10:21 PM, southernhippy wrote:

Old mutt is lying his butt off, Just look at old willie Nelson to see the truth, Pot smoking does not affect your age. Off course old mutt is talking about smoking and not one work about eating.

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 10:24 PM, junior wrote:

something else you forgot oldmutt1949, there was talk about leagalizing it in my state. Even if it does become legalized, we were told by the plant manager that if our random pee test revealed any THC we would still loose our job.

This is why I agree with Vikingbear. Let the herd cull itself. The job market may open up so that someday I can find a job where I can afford a pack of store bought cigarrettes

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 10:32 PM, southernhippy wrote:

BTW mutt lets add some other facts to that mix..

Pot smokers tend to be closer to normal weight...

Higher good cholesterol.

Also lets add the fact that smoking pot don't increase you chances of lung or any other cancer. Not to mention and numerous medical uses of MJ among those would be nausea, seizure control, pain management. So when do we decide when the good outweighs the bad? Almost every war on Pot argument has been debunked, when do you see anything other than hate?

BTW us hippies are alive and well living a great and healthy life style, after all it was us hippies who came up with the who vegetarian thing long before anyone else, peace out...

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 10:57 PM, imnxtc2001 wrote:

"evident by he emergency rooms a In Denver and other cities kept busy treating kids poisoned by this stuff" Yeah oldmutt, them hospital rooms are just packed with them pot smoking whippersnappers. Too funny! If you have any time between your naps and your shuffleboarding league, you can take a few minutes to look up that marijuana by itself equals the same amount of emergency room visits as OTC sleep medicine. I will give you the benefit of the doubt, that you may have been mistaken for synthetic marijuana which is extremely dangerous.

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 10:57 PM, OldSkewel wrote:

Oldmutt1949 is NOT lying southernhippy. ANYONE with at least 1/2 a brain knows it is NOT natural OR healthy to take smoke of ANY kind into a healthy set of lungs.

What I find truly ironic is the very same people that use to jump all over big time tobacco companies and the dangers of smoking absolutely sound like hypocrites now touting the oh so many benefits of cannabis which EVERYONE knows the most popular form of use is the SMOKING thereof.

As far as the economic impact is concerned, it WOULD make sense to legalize it but that's the ONLY reason and EVEN THEN, the economic benefits would be relatively short term compared to the devastating social and moral impact (especially considering America's children) that would no doubt occur as you just as well can take America's public education school system and pitch it out the window, not that it works that well now but can you imagine what would happen if "chronic" was legalized...?

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 11:08 PM, imnxtc2001 wrote:

Just one more observation while I'm still laughing....I'm not perfect with punctuation or grammar, but someone that doesn't smoke marijuana telling me: "jaw breaking" instead of "jaw dropping"...."their" instead "there"....."he" instead of "the"....."a In" instead of just plain out "in" minus the "a" and capital "I".....Geez, I need to smoke a bowl to even make sense of your comment at all.

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 11:09 PM, southernhippy wrote:

Odds of MJ addiction is the same as gambling, Pot has no chemical addiction. You also have the same chance of becoming a workaholic or any other habit that could be considered a bad or good life choice. Pot has been around for more than 10k years and has not stopped any progression of mankind. BTW CBD's that are found in pot are also anti-cancerous, also naturally lowers blood sugars and even can protect the brain in the event of a heart attack or stroke. BTW we are also talking about Eating the plant, y'all do know it's non-toxic and impossible to overdose on right? Y'all are just looking that that lovely drug free propaganda against a persons right to live as they chose too. BTW one other note, Pot does have 5 natural nero keyways in the brain that can open up nero pathways(hence why there is enhanced sight, smells, and creativity.) Pot is indeed a natural product the human mind knows very well. MJ has been demonized for decades for no real reason other than sobriety, nothing else.

I do agree on one Idea though, kids under 21 should not get access and should be treated like booze and advertising should be the same as tobacco when it comes to kids.

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 11:21 PM, imnxtc2001 wrote:

Old Skewel: Is it natural or healthy to drive a car? But you do it anyways don't you? Your trip to the store tomorrow will produce more pollutants into EVERYBODYS air, than one pot smoker can produce in a year. btw....I don't know if you've been asleep the past 50 years, but kids in school(if they choose to)get pot just as easy now, as they would if it was legal and fell under same laws as tobacco. As far as hash...it is basically the same as marijuana, just made from different parts. And the same studies you got your information that it was addictive, are the same ones that say marijuana is also.

Report this Comment On December 01, 2013, at 11:36 PM, HMull81 wrote:

Let’s get a few things right:

First - the problem with legalizing any previously illegal substance isn’t a morally grounded issue; being that most of these substances are vices are not socially accepted when overly indulged anyway.

Second – look up some history and consider why hemp production was ground to a halt in the first place, I’ll give you a hint……

It wasn’t because pothead hippies were overrunning the world with their outrageous free love and open minded way of living, that didn’t come until the 60s.

It is all economic and taxation that has put at spin on what any generation finds acceptable.

It doesn’t matter if you are for or against the legalization of pot, it matters where it would lead to based off of the revenue gained cause face it, the government has stopped doing for the people a long time ago, and if you are current with what is popular; the Kim and Kanye saga get more press than real issues such as legalizing pot, gun law, government debt, and not to forget my favorite government shut down.

I know that if I quit working when I was a soldier in the U.S. Army there were consequences which usually ended with me in a bad kind of way.

Report this Comment On December 02, 2013, at 12:05 AM, allykat7825 wrote:

This will be the first step in finishing off the Regan inspired War against drugs which has cost so many billions over the years. It put the lotteries to shame when the taxes are added up and make many more people happy. Add cocaine to the list and the cartels are a thing of the past, which should please oldmutt. Oldmutt is probably not as old as I am and despite rumors to the contrary, and what many others might think, I still have my wits about me. .

Report this Comment On December 02, 2013, at 1:03 AM, Sniper2013 wrote:

According to CNN's Sanjay Gupta, the other 94% investigate its potential harm. The problem, as Gupta points out, is that it's very hard to run clinical trials on marijuana use since it's still illegal at the national level. While the University of Mississippi farm can provide the medication legally for studies, it's apparently not that all that easy to acquire medication from it".

If the FDA were to subject ANY drug from Big Pharma to the same skewed testing there wouldn't be a new drug on the market for decades. I'm betting that the drugs 'oldmutt' or 'Old Skewel' take to stay alive would never have passed such rigorous testing, and probably contain more virulent side effects than marijuana ever could.

Step into the 21st century, guys, and realize that it's time to put the idiotic and woefully expensive "war on drugs" to rest. It hasn't, and never will, work.

By the way 'old' fellas.....I'm 64 myself and have been a regular pot user for more than 45 of those years. I'm the picture of good health, thanks to a vegetarian diet, and will probably outlive both of you pot demonizers by a decade, at least. Oh, and 'Old Skewel', hashish IS NOT addictive, it's basically the resin from the marijuana flower and is nothing more than a more potent delivery device for THC. The sum total of what you anti-pot "experts" DON'T know is astounding. Then again, when you rely on anti-pot propaganda for your "facts" you're deliberately being fed a pack of lies designed to keep Big Pharma, the Liquor Lobby, and the 'for profit' prison system in customers for years to come. Try thinking for yourself, for once, and do the research so you'll be armed with REAL facts!